


The Only Heaven I'll Be Sent To (Good God, Let Me Give You My Life)

by nerddowell



Series: Some Other Man's Beliefs [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (ish. not as much as the first one), (no really blink and you'll miss it), Brief Mention of Suicide, Bucky needs a hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, Hydra-related trigger warnings, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Needs a Hug, Winter Soldier-related trigger warnings, religion heavy, some sexual content, still using my Catholic upbringing for nefarious purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:41:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to <strong>Innocence Died Screaming (Honey Ask Me, I Should Know)</strong> and the last instalment of the <em>Some Other Man's Beliefs</em> series based on the 'Holy Trinity' of Hozier songs, <em>Foreigner's God</em>, <em>From Eden</em> and <em>Take Me To Church</em>.</p><p>(<strong>Disclaimer:</strong> As I've said in the tags, this series and the first fic in particular deals very heavily with religion (namely Roman Catholicism). Many of the experiences I'm writing about come from personal experiences of mine being raised in the Catholic Church, but I would like to emphasise that this account is <strong>fictional</strong> and should in no way be taken as a completely accurate representation of all Catholics and the Church, everywhere. Equally, I have tried to write without relying too heavily on Catholic stereotypes, but again, I'm writing partly from experience... Basically, please don't get offended if your experience of the Catholic Church is very different to what I have shown here.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Heaven I'll Be Sent To (Good God, Let Me Give You My Life)

**Author's Note:**

> Again typed up on my phone because our local library is laaaaame and closes super early on Saturdays, boo.
> 
> Apologies for any mistakes, they are totally my own!

The sun wakes him as usual, light pouring through the flimsy blinds; he spends more nights in Brooklyn, now, than in the Avengers tower. He no longer feels the need to see Steve every morning to know that he's alive, that the Soldier hasn't taken over in his sleep and completed his last mission. Bucky lies in the old, broken-down bed beneath the thin covers and allows the sunlight to roam over his body, warm and butter-yellow, glinting off the smooth plates of his arm as he idly flexes his fingers. It's a little like being woken by Steve himself; the sense of all-encompassing warmth and light, gently pulling him out of sleep like a parent's hands lifting a newborn out of the cradle. But his eyes open to the cold whiteness of the ceiling above him, paint flaking and scudded with damp in the corners of the room, instead of brilliant blue eyes. It feels half a relief.

Brooklyn is, like the rest of New York, never empty. Not even at 7:35am on a Sunday morning; everywhere there are people in small clusters, pairs, parents with children - fussing over smudges on cheeks and grubby handprints on Mom's skirt as they hurry to wherever it is that people go on an early Sunday morning - heading to church. He passes one, wooden doors with panels of stained glass, two milky white doves with green olive branches in their beaks, flung open - a priest in his green vestments and white robe smiling welcomingly at the congregation as they slowly filter through the doors. There's more than one mother trying to keep unruly young sons in hand - one child with ice-blue eyes and a scrape over his nose is playing on the steps, and won't come no matter how many times his mother hollers his name - and Bucky is reminded of a young James Barnes, Winifred threatening him with no dessert and no dinner and no play date with Steve after church until he sloped reluctantly up the steps behind her, Father Jameson's amused, indulgent smile burning his dirty cheeks red with anger and shame.

He passes the church with his head bowed, loose hair flickering around his cheeks in the brusque sunlight, ignoring the priest's curious gaze. The doors eventually bang closed behind them all, and he takes a deep breath to steady himself before stepping away again, feet leading him in the right direction as if set on tracks. Because of course he knows where to find Steven Grant Rogers on a Sunday; that tiny little chapel in Brooklyn's run-down Irish quarter, the red brick outer scuffed and rain-worn, with the sounds of worship coming from the brilliant inside. Kaleidoscopes of stained glass lie on the concrete churchyard floors, from the candles and electric lights shining through the windows; he remembers that the inside will look the same, bathing the congregation's faces and the pews and the church aisle-runner in fractions of rainbows, like a two-way mirror. He wonders, for several moments, where Steve will be sitting. If he sits at the front, where he can remember what it was like to be seven years old and cloaked in his too-big altar boy's gown; at the back, where he can make a quick getaway should the Avengers need him (time and alien invasions, after all, wait for no man, not even America's pious golden boy). Or in the centre, in their parents' old pew, where Bucky would pull faces and change the prayers to try to make him crack a smile.

Curiosity - always James Barnes' downfall, even as a child - makes him cross the border, step through the gate and allow himself onto consecrated ground. He is no longer afraid of the burning touches of hell licking at his heels as he blasphemes and lies and hides from the watchful gaze of the Lord; nothing after Hydra will frighten him again, nothing after hearing Steve Rogers pray for him as though he could change what has been written ever since the Winter Soldier first awoke. He climbs the stairs, halts at the door - listens to the hymn being sung, and fails to convince himself he's not searching for the familiar baritone holding up the lower end, a constant, grounding bassline beneath the women's altos and sopranos.

He remembers the choir auditions. Father Jameson's face on Steve's, eyes roving over his friend's pale, lightly freckled face, the twist of frustrated disappointment in the corners of the priest's mouth - the feeling of victory in his own chest, at Steve having accidentally and wholly against his own will thwarted a plan he was completely innocent of. Steve, always so small and fragile and angelic, like a child blown from glass, with delicate hands and feet and a voice like gold thread, on the verge of breaking. Bucky had passed straight away, with barely any effort. Steve had always envied him the effortlessness of his charm and skill with the dames when they were younger, when they were alive and Brooklyn was alive around them and the girls still wore petticoats and curlers in their hair. But Bucky had envied him all the more for his sweet guilelessness, the way his blue eyes could never lie. Bucky, living a lie his entire life, envied Steve his honesty.

Steve sang that night, and Bucky heard the first lie he had ever witnessed Steve tell. His singing was rough, wobbly, weak - breaking on notes Bucky knew he could hit with no problem. The sound was all wrong. Every time Steve sang, Bucky would hear angels; but this time, Steve's voice was making the ugly sound inside Bucky's own chest, fear and shame and disgust, and he had no idea why or where it had come from. But Steve had blushed, shame-faced, and allowed himself to be punished - to be denied what he wanted so badly, as a result of his failings - and Bucky had been nonplussed.

He listens for Steve's singing now, and immediately catches it, the ribbon of gold weaving through the rising crescendo of organ music and women's voices, a hymn he hasn't heard before - too many years outside of a church, outside of the Lord's gaze, in the darkness.

 _I the Lord of sea and sky_  
_I have heard my people cry_  
_All who dwell in dark or sin_  
_My hand will save_

Steve made that promise to him, so long ago. That he has been forgiven, by God and men alike. Bucky hadn't believed him then; he doesn't believe him now. But he cares less. It's nothing he needs to hear any more.

The doors are still open. He steps inside, feels the warmth of wood-panelled walls around him and smells the lemon-scented polish used on the pews, wary eyes flitting from back of head to back of head, looking for the familiar neatly-combed glint of gold. Bucky Barnes could always pick Steve Rogers out of a crowd of millions.

Steve is sat towards the back, three pews away from where Bucky is loitering at the top of the aisle. Bucky watches him turn the page of the hymnal, long, clever artist's fingers - his hands and feet one of the few things left unchanged by the serum, now in proportion to his tall, well-built body instead of huge on a skinny, short frame - flicking the page, thumb stroking over the elaborate 'I's at the beginning of every verse. Steve's hymnal looks old, worn and battered by age and the thousands of hands turning its thin pages. His voice sits comfortably below his neighbours', two older women with thin, reedy voices and a young boy who can't be older than seven, who lisps irritatingly over the words. Steve doesn't notice Bucky sliding into the pew behind, leaning forward slightly to catch every word leaving the blond's lips.

 _I have wept for love of them_  
_They turn away._  
_I will break their hearts of stone_

Bucky's chest constricts. He is convinced, briefly, that this is a trick; that this is Father Jameson coming back from what will undoubtedly by now be the grave to torture him again; that this hymn has been chosen with him in mind, to cause Steve pain. Because his friend's voice catches over the words, and his knuckles whiten around the bound pages, fists clenched and arms tense. The woman beside Steve gives him a soft look and reaches out to pat his arm, and he flinches briefly before giving her a tight, wounded smile, and mutters an 'I'm fine, thanks'. Bucky knows different, of course. Steve has only ever smiled like that when he's trying to push away things that hurt too much to focus on - times like when he is kneeling in front of Peggy Carter, labelled Sousa,'s grave, laying flowers below the headstone and whispering words Bucky isn't meant to hear to her. It pains him to think of it; it has always pained him to think of Steve hurting, even when he was trapped behind the walls of ice in the Soldier's muddled, unclear mind.

 _Till their hearts be satisfied_  
_I will give My life to them_  
_Whom shall I send?_

Steve's head tilts slightly, and Bucky follows his gaze up to the roof, the vaulted ceilings with their plaster cherubs settled over the wooden columns. Steve's eyes - viewed in quarter profile as Bucky is seeing them - are wet, glistening at the edges and along the lower lash line, and his voice is tight as he tries to force the words out. Bucky had never known Steve to cry in church. It's usually been him doing that.

First Holy Communion. Bucky had been so afraid of attending confession that he had cried, fat tears rolling down his cheeks as he fidgeted miserably on the pew. He'd deliberately filed himself last, to give himself time to calm down; it only made things worse, waiting and wondering what the priest would say, whether he would be cast out the moment he opened his quivering mouth, when Bucky did as asked and confessed every dark, poisonous secret lodged in his chest to Father Jameson. Confessed how he knew that Steve was in danger every time he went to church; confessed how he hadn't told anyone like his Ma had always encouraged him to if he got into trouble; confessed how he was making it worse for Steve by keeping it quiet, how he was becoming an accomplice, an abuser, by proxy - how he was turning Steve bad, moulding him in Bucky's own image, condemning him alongside himself -

 _Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?_  
_I have heard you calling in the night_

Steve always woke faithfully when Bucky screamed his name at night in the Tower, caught in nightmares that caved in his chest and made his pulse roar. Always Steve, as though his friend were the only person left alive in the world. Sometimes, Bucky thinks, perhaps he is. He inhales sharply.

_I will go, Lord. If you lead me._

Steve is turning, Bucky's gasp in his ears; he flees just as blue turns towards him, perhaps catching the side of his face as his hair swings out to hide him again, part of the shadows and the dark where Steve's God and His light cannot reach.

* * *

He returns to the mouldering flat on that short, squat street in Brooklyn's old quarter, where he and the Steve Rogers of pre-war childhood had lived, and sits on the bed. His head in his hands. Steve has always been strong, always been capable and confident and able to fight every corner. Even when he was physically weak, getting his ass handed to him in every alley in Brooklyn, Steve had been the hero. Bucky was the one being saved, over and over, by the benediction of Steve's eyes on his, and Steve's hand wiping the blood off Bucky's split lip when he kicked the bullies to the kerb, and Steve's voice in his ears as he muttered, "I had 'im on the ropes." Bucky always knew that Steve meant the hulking giants always pounding him into the sidewalk concrete, but he couldn't help feeling as if it were partly meant for him, too - because god knows Steve always had him on the ropes too, waiting for the self-hatred and the internal pummelling to be enough and for Bucky to admit that he needed to be saved and cared for the way he never let anyone do for him.

Steve's gentle hands on his, soft gaze lingering over his flushed cheeks, as he tried to tamp down on everything bubbling up in his chest through the mire of self-loathing, every good, shining _Steve_ feeling that left those bitter trails in their wake.

The door to the bedroom opens, and Steve is standing in the archway, his eyes as old and tired as his body will never be. Steve Rogers has seen a thousand lifetimes pass, Bucky knows; he's sure his own eyes must look the same to outsiders, screaming that everything is wrong and he's too exhausted to put it right.

"Old haunts, Buck?"

"You know me," he murmurs, hoping for some of the swaggering charm of 1939 in his voice, "I've always been a creature of habit."

Steve snorts, settles down beside him on the bed. "I saw you in church this morning. Runnin' like the Devil himself were after ya." Steve's accent - Brooklyn, thick and rich as treacle, the familiar drawl - is always stronger in their home neighbourhood, around Bucky. He's the living embodiment of the age old adage, _You can take the boy outta Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn outta the boy._ Steve, here in this peeling, dank old room, is the boy from Brooklyn, golden hair flopping in his eyes and thick, lazy voice choked with the past.

"He was." Bucky says, and Steve glances at him with hurt eyes.

"Buck, you know that ain't true."

"Come off it, Rogers - you really think I have a snowball's chance in hell of goin' anywhere else after this? You an' me, we're not..." _We're not going to be together when the chips are down, Stevie, you know that_ \- "...not again. I ain't gonna let you."

"You're gonna have to fight me on it, Buck," Steve insists, fierce and low in his throat. Bucky smiles mirthlessly and shrugs.

"What makes you so sure, anyway?" he asks, eyes on Steve's face. "What makes you think the old man upstairs is lettin' me go anywhere near his choir invisible an' you, after everything I've done to the pair of you?"

Steve gives him that patented Steve Rogers _that's-a-fucking-dumb-question-Buck_ expression. "I'm sure, Buck. The Soldier has nothing to do with you -"

"The Soldier _is_ me, Rogers!"

"- he's got nothin' to do with you, Bucky, because you didn't have any control over him. He's part of you, sure, but he's the part of you that they were controlling and it's them who have to answer for what he did, not you. I know you were in there somewhere screamin' at him _No_ , tellin' him to stop, because you're a good man, Buck, you're a good man and you've never hurt anyone in your life -"

"Don't go makin' me out t'be some kind of choirboy!" Bucky snaps back, anger he can't control flaring under his skin at Steve's bullheaded stupidity. He's got no idea - never has - how inextricably linked Bucky and the Soldier are; how Bucky still lives in fear that he is one hundred percent Winter Soldier, that Hydra's poisonous little splinter inside him will seize control at any moment and flip their lives upside down again with another incident like in the kitchen months back. He flinches, remembering being shocked back to himself with the pain of his back slamming into the kitchen table, Steve's hand at his throat as he wrenched the knife out of Bucky's hand, and the realisation hitting him that he had attempted, yet again, to murder Steve Rogers in the fucking kitchen of his home. He knows JARVIS would never let him do it - that the other Avengers would never let Captain America die at the hands of his childhood friend-turned-Soviet assassin - but the fear remains that he will lose what little control he has over the actions of Bucky Barnes, and the world around him will fracture in flames and ash and screaming all over again.  
"Don't go makin' me out to be an innocent, like I never done a thing wrong - like I never hurt anyone - like I'm some kind of angel! I've killed people, Steve - I've killed and tortured them and I can feel the blood drippin' off my hands every fuckin' night when I wake up screaming because I'm a fuckin' _monster_ \- I'm a killer and I'm their fucking machine and there's nothin' I can do about it because I'm the Soldier and he's me!"

"No, Bucky, he's not," Steve says, low and hurt, and grasps Bucky's face in his hands. Bucky fights - struggles, lashing out with both fists, metal and flesh, and Steve weathers it, won't let him go - hangs on like he's falling out of that train all over again but this time, this time Steve will save him or fucking go with him, so long as they won't be parted. Bucky wishes, sudden and aching, that that was happened; selfishly, dreams of falling and taking Steve with him, so that in his last moments he could have Steve's hand in his and accept his death - and the sickness washes over him like the tide. He's just wished his best friend dead - wished his best friend murdered by his own hand, his own depraved desire for them never to be broken apart killing his best friend. He's sick.

Nausea swamps him. He shoves Steve away, choking on it, gagging - he retches, his head aching, his eyes swimming with tears - he can't breathe, he can't focus on anything but the tearing guilt in his stomach telling him he's the worst fractured, evil being imaginable.  
"Yes - _d-da, da_ \- h-he is -"

"No, Bucky," Steve grasps his head again, forces him to look him in the eyes. Bucky's head is swimming but Steve, as ever, is grounding him, the eye in the middle of a storm, the anchor amongst the pitching waves. He focuses on Steve's eyes and clutches at his arms, trying to drown out the screams in his ears, the visuals of the Soldier, dripping blood, walking away from mission after mission, silent and stoic and filled with hatred.  
"No, Buck, you deserve to be forgiven. He deserves to be forgiven. They did unforgivable things with you, to you - but it's not your fault and it never fucking will be, and Jesus, Bucky, you can't leave me, you can't let them take you again -"

"No - I don't, I don't deserve - he doesn't fucking deserve anything - he's - I'm -" _a monster_ "- I can't be forgiven, I don't deserve it -" _How do you save something without a soul?_

"You deserve -" _the whole fucking world, Bucky Barnes_ , Steve's voice inaudibly screams, and Bucky shakes the thought away, _torturous, it hurts_ "- to be forgiven." Steve grips him tighter, eyes desperate. "You listen to me - you listen to me, Barnes - Buck -"

"'M goin' to hell -" _There's nothing you can do to stop it - can't save me, Rogers, can't save me after everything he's done, we're one and the same -_

"No!" Steve yells. "Not without me!" _The Hydra facility, Austria, the bombs, the clouds of fire with grasping hands plucking Steve's body out of the air as he hurls himself into the void between the two platforms -_ Go, _he screams - Bucky answers, slamming his hands against the railings, his own voice ringing in his ears -_ No! Not without you!

"You can't -"

"Don't you tell me what I can an' can't do, Buck -" Steve gasps, hands fisted in Bucky's hair, so tightly it hurts. His temples are throbbing with the blood rush - "I broke that promise to you once, _til the end of the line_ , and I ain't gonna break it again - I ain't leavin' you, never again - I swore - I swore before God, I ain't leavin' you -"

"The t-train? N-no, Steve, I -"

"Not the train," Steve all but sobs, trembling, his eyes infinitely pained - "not the train, but 'm never gonna forgive myself for it and you're never gonna forgive me either -"

" _Steve -_ "

"No! Not without you, Bucky," he sobs, and Bucky's heart breaks; finally, that black space inside him cracks and there's a heart inside him after all, weak and limp from decades of abuse, but Steve Rogers has broken it all over again. "Never goin' to heaven without you, or anywhere else."

"You promise?" he gasps, eyes wide, terror flooding him - terror of falling all over again, of feeling that last slim thread of Steve leave him with the slip of his fingers out of Bucky's clutching hands - and Steve nods, frantic, desperate.

"Christ, I promise - I promise, Bucky -"

Bucky doesn't need to go heaven. All he needs is Steve - his god, the absolute, the one fixed point of his existence - the only heaven he needs. Steve's hands wrapped around his body, his throat; those eyes, bright and blue and so, so honest - the only person he needs forgiveness from, the only person he needs to pray to, the universe around his trembling body: Steven Grant Rogers.

"I - f-forgive m-me -" he sobs, panting against Steve's skin, and Steve makes a wounded noise, agony boiling in his throat, forcing the wet sob out of him like he's choking on it - "forgive me, f-forgive me -"

" _Bucky_ -"

" _I love you!_ " The world crashes, splinters, burning his skin, too hot - screams in his ears, the Devil laughing - the tiny, cowering James Barnes sobbing in the confessional as he whispers those words, his own damnation.

* * *

Steve collapses to the bed, drags him on top of him; he's sobbing, Bucky wrapped around him like a creeping vine, both of them drowning in it. He's pressing wet kisses to Bucky's mouth, desperate and painfully raw and tasting of tears, his hands gripping Bucky's hair, choking gasps and sobs into Bucky's mouth, and they're raw, too raw, a pair of nerves grating against each other until the pain is too strong, too sharp to register any longer, too heady, and they are locked together - confessional, hell - purgatory.

"C'mere, c'mere, please - _please_ -" Steve groans, voice wrecked, drawing Bucky in for pained, bruising kisses between every word, grasping at him like he's trying to drag Bucky inside himself, to mould them together like they've always wanted, more than anything - togetherness, to be together til the end, whenever that may come and whatever it may be - just let it be them, and let them never be parted, because the pain is agonising and neither can stand it.

Bucky tries to pull away - he doesn't deserve this, _no, never, never again_ \- but Steve whines and he can't, he can't ever deny Steve Rogers anything; Steve could tell him to kill someone, himself, and he would do it without a heartbeat passing, because he is so desperate - he is so frantic with need, with the need to be forgiven and taken and forgiven and loved by this man, ever since he was a child -

"Come here, Christ -" and Steve grabs his hands, wrenches off his tshirt - Bucky's overshirt, tshirt, presses Bucky's hands to his skin, the empty expanse of gold between them, and they're bared to each other, Steve's honest eyes blazing over him, the worst torture, the sweetest pain. Hydra had broken him with electricity, with ice and hatred and lies, but Steve - Steve, who has never told a lie, who has never burned with him - Steve is breaking him anew, and it hurts, Christ, it hurts - but he doesn't want it to stop, never, never again because it's them and it's good, it's so good because Steve's hands haven't left his skin once and he's so open and vulnerable and he's drowning in that gaze and Steve is sinking with him.

"Forgive me," Bucky sobs, and Steve nods, hands fisted in Bucky's hair as he wraps his free arm around his back and mouths at Bucky's neck, tears smearing wet and slightly sticky over his throat. Bucky gasps, confesses - confesses everything, over the years, things he has done and said and thought, every sin he has ever committed - and Steve kisses him for every one, holds him closer, presses their bodies together and _forgives_.

Steve fumbles at his belt and Bucky arches his hips, still crying, still gasping weakly, words and nonsense, Steve panting against his shoulder with tears stinging in the tooth marks the blond is leaving, tracing his lips over the thick, knotted scars connecting Bucky's flesh to the metal of his arm, Hydra's torment, the weapon of a thousand murders. His hand is shoving inside Bucky's pants as he whispers back to him, things he never thought Steve Rogers would could have to confess to, so many things - the train, the train, over and over again - and he holds Bucky all the tighter for it, hand locked in his hair, and Bucky's hands grip his face as he presses their lips together for kisses that are drunk with need, shuddering against each other, sharp and soft.

He can taste blood as Steve rolls them, locks their bodies together, pain in his core, pain blossoming into electricity that makes him cry out and sob Steve's name, _forgive me, forgive me, please_ , and he's gasping and Steve is still burning against him, hips working, and he's sobbing into Bucky's shoulder, Peggy Carter's name followed by _I'm sorry, forgive me_ and Bucky understands, understands and clutches him and kisses him again because Steve needs him just as much as Bucky needs Steve at the moment, and it's agony, it's so painful - the name sears inside him, but it's burning away that black numbness, and the fireworks are filling his body, lighting him inside like a sunburst, melting away the dark and it's leaking from him in confessions and swears and sins and Steve is his god, burning them away with each pistoning thrust of his hips as he works out his own guilt inside Bucky -

" _Steve_ -"

"Please - p-please, Buck, I-I'm sorry -"

He's sorry too, he's so sorry, and he's arching, pulled towards that streaming white light as though on a hook, back bowing as Steve chases him, lift him there, and he's opening his eyes to the blinding sunlight as he takes in Steve's face, the raw, choking voice sobbing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you -" and he's exploding, swallowed by heat and pleasure until all he can do is fall, fall and feel that pleasure let him go, knowing Steve is simultaneously following and waiting to catch him when he hits the bed again -

A long, shuddering gasp tears out of his lungs. He stares at Steve like seeing the face of God, and he feels - _human_.

Steve holds him, both of them pressed into the bed, and nuzzles away his sobs with a tear-streaked nose against his jaw, and they lie and breathe and _are_. Til the end.


End file.
